halfling,' he said to Drizzt, obviously confused. 'To get him and skin him alive, and now ye're telling me to trust him?'
'Different halfling,' Drizzt remarked, snapping his blades into their sheaths.
An inadvertent grin showed on the dwarf's face as he considered the advantage his enemy apparently had just given him.
'We are not your enemy,' Drizzt said evenly, lavender eyes flashing dangerously, 'but I've no more time to play your foolish games.'
Pwent leaned forward, muscles twitching, eager to leap ahead and rip the drow apart.
Again the drow's eyes flashed, and Pwent relaxed, understanding that this opponent had just read his thoughts.
'Come ahead if you will,' Drizzt warned, 'but know that the next time you go down, you will never get back up.'
Thibbledorf Pwent, rarely shaken, considered the grim promise and his opponent's easy stance, and he remembered what Catti-brie had told him about this drow-if indeed this was the legendary Drizzt Do'Urden. 'Guess we're friends,' the unnerved dwarf admitted, and he slowly rose.
Chapter 23 The Warrior Incarnate
With Pwent backtracking and leading the way, I Drizzt was sure he would soon learn the fate of his friends, and would face his evil sister once more. The battlerager couldn't tell him much about Bruenor and the others, only that when he had been separated from them, they were being hard pressed.
The news drove Drizzt on more quickly. Images of Catti-brie, a helpless prisoner being tortured by Vierna, flitted on the edges of his consciousness. He pictured stubborn Bruenor spitting in Vierna's face-and Vierna tearing the dwarf's face off in reply.
Few chambers dotted this region. Long, narrow tunnels dominated, some wholly natural, others worked in places where the goblins apparently had decided that support was needed. The three came into a fully bricked tunnel then, long and straight, angling slightly up and with several side passages running off it. Drizzt didn't see the forms of the dark elves ahead of him, down the long, dark corridor, but when Twinkle flared suddenly, he did not doubt the sword's warning.
The fact was confirmed a moment later when a cross bow quarrel zipped from the darkness and stuck Regis in the arm. The halfling groaned; Drizzt pulled him back and dropped him safely behind the corner of a side passage they had just passed. By the time the drow had turned back to the main corridor, Pwent was in full charge, singing wildly, taking hit after hit from poisoned darts but walking through them without a concern.
Drizzt rushed after him, saw Pwent charge right past the dark hole of another side corridor, and knew instinctively that the dwarf likely had wandered into a trap.
Drizzt lost all track of the battlerager a moment later, when a quarrel shot past the distant dwarf to hit Drizzt. He looked down to it, hanging painfully from his forearm, and felt the burning tingle as Pwent's countering elixir battled the poison. Drizzt thought of slumping where he stood, of inviting his enemies to think that their poison had felled him again, an easy capture.
He couldn't abandon Pwent, though, and he was simply too angry to wait for this encounter any longer. The time had come to end the threat.
He slipped up to the dark hole of the side tunnel, kept Twinkle back a bit so it would not fully give him away. A roar of outrage exploded from up ahead, followed by a steady stream of dwarven curses, which told Drizzt that Pwent's intended victims had slipped away.
Drizzt heard a slight shuffle to the side, knew that the battlerager had piqued the curiosity of whoever was in there. He took one deep breath, mentally counted to three, and leaped around the corner, Twinkle flaring viciously. The closest drow fell back, firing a second crossbow quarrel at Drizzt that nicked his skin through a shoulder crease in his fine armor. He could only hope that Pwent's potion was strong enough to handle a second hit and took some comfort in the fact that Pwent had seemed to be hit repeatedly during his corridor charge.
Drizzt pressed the crossbowman backward in a rush, the evil drow fumbling to draw his melee weapon. He would have had the drow quickly, except that a second drow joined him, this one armed with sword and dirk. — Drizzt had come into a small, roughly circular chamber, a second exit off to his right, probably joining the main corridor somewhere farther along. Drizzt hardly registered the physical features of the room, though, hardly took note of the initial swings of battle, parrying aside his opponents' measured strikes. His eyes remained beyond them, to the back of the room, where stood Vierna and the mercenary Jarlaxle.
'You have caused me great pains, my lost brother,' Vierna snarled at him, 'but the reward will be worth the cost, now that you have returned to me.'
Listening to her every word, the distracted Drizzt nearly let a sword slip past his defenses. He slapped it away at the last moment and came on in a flourish, scimitars swirling in a descending, crisscrossing pattern.
The dark elf soldiers worked well together, though, and they fended off the attack, countering one after the other and forcing Drizzt back on his heels.
'I do so love to watch you fight,' Vierna continued, now smiling smugly, 'but I cannot take the chance that you will be slain-not yet.' She began a series of chants then, and Drizzt knew her impending spell would be aimed his way, probably at his mind. He gritted his teeth and accelerated the course of his battle, conjuring images of a tortured Catti-brie, putting up a wall of sheer anger.
Vierna released her spell with a glorious cry, and waves of energy rolled over Drizzt, assaulted him and told him, mind and body, to stop in place, to simply hold still and be captured.
Inside the drow ranger welled a part of him, a primal and savage alter ego that he had not known since his days in the wild Underdark. He was the hunter again, free of emotions, free of mental vulnerability. He shrugged away the spell; his scimitars banged hard against his enemies' blades, hard-pressing his two opponents.
Vierna's eyes went wide with surprise. Jarlaxle, at her side, gave an undeniable snicker.
'Your Lloth-given powers will not affect me,' Drizzt proclaimed. 'I deny the Spider Queen!'
'You will be given to the Spider Queen!' Vierna shouted back, and she seemed to gain the upper hand once more as another drow soldier entered the chamber from the tunnel to Drizzt's right. 'Kill him!' the priestess commanded. 'Let the sacrifice be here and now. I'll tolerate no more blasphemy from this outcast!'
Drizzt was fighting magnificently, keeping both his enemies more on their heels than on their toes. If the third skilled soldier came in, however…
It never got to that. There came a wild roar from the tunnel on the right, and Thibbledorf Pwent, head bowed in one of his typically frantic charges, plowed through.
He hit the surprised drow soldier on the side, his bent helmet spike slicing through the unfortunate elf's slender hip, tearing into his abdomen.
Pwent's powerful legs continued to drive through until he at last got tangled in the impaled drow's feet, and both combatants crashed to the floor right before a stunned Vierna.
The drow thrashed in helpless desperation as Pwent pounded him mercilessly.
Drizzt knew he had to get to his peer's side quickly, understood the danger Pwent faced with Vierna and the mercenary having open shots at him. He brought Twinkle in a flashing downward cross, deflecting both his opponents' swords to the side, and he stepped right in behind the blade, coming with his second blade at his closest opponent, the one who had hit him with the crossbow bolt and who carried no second weapon.
The arm of the other drow shot across, dirk hitting the scimitar just enough to prevent a kill. Still, Drizzt had scored a painful hit on one opponent, slicing the drow's cheek wide.
– Out came Vierna's snake-headed whip, the priestess's face an image of pure rage as she beat at the prone battle rager's back. Living snake heads darted about the battle-rager's fine armor, finding gaps through which they could bite at his thick hide.
Pwent wriggled his helmet spike free, drove a glove nail through the dying dark elf's face, then turned his attention to his newest attacker and her wicked weapon.
Snap!
A snake head got him on the shoulder. Two others nipped his neck. Pwent threw his arm up as he turned,
